A Flag Land Base anniversary

We've been keeping track: It's now been FIVE years since the last update at the official website of the Flag Land Base at fso.org.
Absolutely no new content of any sort has been allowed to be created or posted there since late 2020.
The ruler of Scientology, Sea Org Captain Mr. David Miscavige, is EXTREMELY opposed to Scientologists explicating or evaluating Scientology or its sub-organizations in any way. This simply cannot be done.
The reason why he won't let people write or talk about Scientology is simple. If they did, they would have to start thinking about Scientology.
* https://www.scientology-fso.org/news/

Religious thought experiment: The Pencil Test

Imagine a well-balanced pencil standing on end on a table. Perhaps the Joker put it there.
Is there necessarily some being in all of reality that would be able to topple this pencil, no matter where in all the universes we are located?

Religious people believe that such a being does exist.
If God is omnipotent, he certainly shouldn't have any trouble toppling this pencil. It's just that God doesn't want to do that you see. For the same reason that this entity doesn't want to communicate with mankind in any way.

God doesn't exist of course - but that's not all:
Even if infinitely many powerful beings do exist, none of them could topple this pencil if you performed the experiment. No matter how many times you repeated it.
You know in your heart this is true.

Scientology is fundamentally unable to address questions of this nature. Thought experiments are strictly forbidden. You are supposed to change the subject at once, and perhaps pay a penalty for asking questions instead of just following the written instructions.
To some extent, science also restrains itself from asking existential questions.

That is wrong, and it should change.
Reality does not resemble religion in any way. That doesn't mean we can't learn more about reality. In fact, we should try to do so.
Such an effort should actually replace religion.

Is "God" mostly a rhetorical tool for society?

The concept of "God" may actually serve a low-level social function above all else.
It's to answer so called "shit test" questions. These are very complicated questions that would require a lot of wasted effort to answer and would just cause frustration.
Like why didn't you have more children? Why is your nose so big? Why don't you have more money?
The reason: it was all God's will.
Even Scientologists could use this useful tool, if they believe in the "Eight Dynamic".

SO... LiveJournal is down for good

Whoever is in charge of that outfit, is now shadowbanning all posts. No new LiveJournal posts can be made anymore (at least not from USA/North America, maybe still from Central Europe and China?), but this fact is hidden from its users. THEY will still see their own posts, but others can't see them. So the users still think they are posting normally, but in fact they're not.
This is done by cookies, browser tracking, etc.
It really sucks. I have been posting on LiveJournal since 2007 for heavens sake!

Now LiveJournal has turned into another Reddit. They are also fanatic about shadowbanning their users, encouraging them to waste their time by creating elaborate extended posts, but not letting other users see them.
Shadowbanning is just one of the many evil things that evil people get away with.
It really sucks, but usually evil cannot be defeated. Well, sometimes it can be, but less than half the time. It's like the difference between Hitler and Stalin. You just have to work around it.

True, some of the stuff I wrote could be seen as controversial, especially the Scientology exposes. But I didn't think a Russian company like LiveJournal would mind about that? After all, they have "shadowbanned" Scientology itself, causing it to quietly disappear from the Russian Federation without a peep from David Miscavige or the Scientology websites (such as they are).

Fortunately, I have kept all my old posts in text files. Maybe I'll repost them all here in a single big superpost?

The legal heirs of the Tintin comics should release a new album

The often brilliant Belgian comic book series known as the Adventures of Tintin by Herge hasn't released a new album in half a century.
There can't be another one, because the creator left instructions that he didnt want anyone else to draw the characters after his death in 1983. At that time, he left only a few incomplete sketches of a final comics album known as "Tintin and Alph-Art".
No one is allowed to finish it. We'll have to wait until 2054 until all copyright protections expire. (The copyright system is very powerful. We all know how Scientology managed to abuse it for decades.)

And yet, it could be done. A new album should be created, all perfectly legal.
It wouldn't include any of the original characters, while still being set in their universe.
The original characters would be mentioned, and it would reveal many new details about their lives.
For example, the newspaper that Tintin works for, and the detectives' police agency. All kinds of information about previous adventures, like the global reaction to the moon landing, and the investigation of paranormal events.

It would be a logically consistent deconstruction, going outside and beyond all previous stories, without breaking continuity in any way.
In case Moulinsart publishers are interested, I have hundreds of ideas available . . .

What will REALLY happen after we die?

I figured it out guys!
According to Scientology, after you die your spirit migrates to a newborn baby's body, located in a not-too-distant maternity ward.
The scientific truth is of course something rather different than that.
I believe the best approximation of what really happens is the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, combined with the Closest Continuer theory by Robert Nozick.

When you die, the pattern of your brain is utterly destroyed. But throughout the multiverse, there exist infinitely many patterns that represent a "continuation" of your brain's final mind pattern.
The closest continuer is likely to be the most numerous continuer: the one that has the most copies throughout the multiverse. Which is also likely to be the simplest continuer . . .

These patterns can exist anywhere as hidden numbers, ordered in every possible way in the endless chaos of all that exists.
Let's call it the "Minimal self-recognizable mind instantiation" Theory ("Miseremi").

So the answer to the question of whether your spirit continues after you die is both yes and no.
After death, there is a fractional continuation of personal awareness, in which every memory will be recalled and extended. But this will be a random and chaotic process, with no greater meaning.
Being dead will be like dreaming. Most dreams are forgotten even before they end.

Religion is about the promise of a universal solution

First things first: the universe - the totality of everything that exists - is infinitely evil. There is no natural principle that prevents literally unlimited bad things from coming into existence.
It appears we may already be lost, utterly doomed, without any hope at all.
On the other hand . . . In this sentence, the word infinite is pertinent, since humanity is very much finite.

It's a bit of a longshot, but being finite, there might be some sort of abstract limit to how complex and extensive all of our problems could become (they would seem unlimited, of course). Just maybe, all our human concerns, across all reality and every level of existence, could have a finite resolution.
This resolution would be definitive, indisputable and conclusive. From our perspective, it would apply universally, to the limits of our understanding.
Of course that resolution would have to be immensely vast. In fact it would be astronomically, factorially, hyper-exponentially larger than a full description of humanity itself. It would be a philosophical, logical, and scientific quest - the greatest and most difficult achievement of all time.

Religion would have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Scientology, on the other hand, claims that the problems of human torture and suffering never really existed in the first place. They're all just part of a grand illusion, one that can ONLY be removed under the authority of the Church of Scientology.

Is Hell real?

Reading about the four known levels of the Tegmark Multiverse is very enlightening. We live in an infinite hierarchy of nested universes, so all possible horrors must exist somewhere out there (Tegmark glossed over that part).
One of the many implications of this fact is that all past tyrants and abusers will eventually be recreated as realistic computer simulations in countless possible worlds. This will happen in either their own futures, or in some parallel timeline; by their own descendants, or by other civilizations who make this one of their missions.
The malevolent mind types will then be punished indefinitely. This is what the folks at LessWrong might call acausal mind capture (or something, I'm not quite sure of the terminology).
But universal revenge must be a fundamental truth of nature. This could be seen as the atheist incentive in favor of good behavior.

It's very different from Scientology's views on "Hell", which to a large extent punish anyone who has never practised Scientology, or who opposes them, or refuses to donate enough money to them.

What's wrong with X.com under Elon Musk?

I hate to say it, but X/Twitter is not living up to its potential.
I think that X.com should become more like Reddit, as much as I disagree with that far-left hive of online conformity. There was enough forced conformity in high school to last for a lifetime.
X.com's comment formatting should be closer together, with much denser text. Also, allow everyone to post long comments. Allow downvotes in addition to upvotes.
Simply put, we need more diversity to increase information bandwidth. Right now, it feels like trying to suck an elephant through a straw.
Paid accounts could still be presented to their followers and others in ways calculated to give them more views, and thus more upvotes. They would still appear at the top of the comment threads.

Inside Scientology Cincinnati

This was just a small Org. Life at the Flag Land Base must be far more restrictive and intense.

posted by "Fun-Supermarket5164" at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/scientology/comments/1o8m1l9/what_happens_at_the_local_org_when_someone_blows/

START QUOTED SECTION:

Inside the Org:

Staff routinely worked 80–90 hrs a week with no pay except small commissions.
Executives, led by Jeanie Sonenfild, enforced Sea Org-style discipline and redirected all effort toward fundraising for the “Ideal Org.”
Confidential case data was openly discussed in meetings, and staff were forbidden to date or have sex unless “engaged,” a control borrowed from Sea Org rules.

When someone tried to blow:

The HAS (Ghafoor Khan) and Ethics / OSA team (Thalia Durich, née Ghiglia) launched a local “blow drill.” Phones, car keys, and even passports were seized; staff were physically blocked from leaving.
The Qual Sec (Andy Hoosier) or another auditor would run a “metered interview” to extract written confessions before the person was allowed out the door.
A coerced Leaving Staff Routing Form and affidavit were signed under duress to protect the Church’s PR.

After a blow:

The person was secretly declared SP. OSA and HCO spread “Dead Agent” rumors, and all staff were ordered to un-friend or disconnect.
Blame was assigned to whoever “failed to handle the blow,” often resulting in group punishment or loss of privileges.
Fundraising continued as if nothing happened—management only cared that stats not crash.

Collapse and Aftermath:

By 2011 the Org was imploding: major donors, auditors, and long-time public walked away.
In 2013 Roiger wrote that life had never been better since leaving: he married, built a home, and joked, “Was I supposed to pay off a six-figure freeloader bill? SUCK IT!”

TL;DR:
Cincinnati ran like a mini-Sea Org base—forced labor, financial coercion, physical detention, and retaliation when anyone tried to leave. Roiger’s thread documents the entire cycle from inside the command structure and matches what many ex-staff, like myself, later confirmed.

END QUOTED SECTION

Life in a Northern Town

I've always had a soft spot for a certain type of bleak, depressing - well you could call it "liminal" style of images and settings.
Like those propaganda photos of life and architecture in the Soviet Union. It's a kind of absolute grimness, beyond the hope of hope itself. The bleakness of mundane life, as praised by left-wing politicians.
Why is this all so bad?
Because it can't go on forever, of course.
Stasis is actually decay.

A distorted version of this is also a Scientology law. If you're not getting richer, you're getting worse...

The Timesharer

It's fun to try to invent ways to solve the so-called "Alignment Problem" of artificial intelligence. Posthuman computer systems could become very dangerous. There is too much that can go wrong. We should worry more about that.

My main solution is something like this: there should be only ONE mind in Posthumanity.
It would generate all Posthuman awareness, by running through all the stored and artificially created subminds one at a time. It would use many distributed processors, but they would become increasingly integrated. Every backed-up human mind would be reinstated for a minuscule timespan, multiple times per day. To them, it would appear seamless.

Posthuman minds could be arranged in order, according to similarities along every dimension. They would be sorted by running and comparing them in separate blocks of time.
The purpose of this precaution is to be able to detect unwanted mindlike states. It's to prevent torturous or diabolical perceptions and thoughts, before they can threaten their thinkers and others.

Of course, Scientology doesn't have anything to say about dealing with the threat of superhuman intelligence, as such speculations wouldn't have been profitable for L. Ron Hubbard to write about in the 1950s. Folks had other concerns back then, like nuclear weapons and suburban anomie.
Religious leaders of every age are very good at integrating current events into their eschatologies.

I have an idea to let EVERYONE determine the skyline of some of the world's great cities

It would be a mixed complex of a few dozen large buildings with many different styles.
The elements could be randomly rearranged in quadrillions of ways. Skyscrapes can be many different shapes and heights.
Any member of the public could vote to shuffle these components any way they want.
The final layout would be determined by all the votes. This could be done in a pseudorandom way.
Then everyone would know it would have been completely different, if not for them! In Scientology terms, it might make them feel more "causative"?

Maybe they should try something like this for downtown Clearwater, it couldn't be worse than what's going on there now.

What the sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day SHOULD have been

In 1991, the most awesome film of all time was released.
In 2003, a so-called sequel came out, but it had nothing of what made the original awesome. In fact, the sequel shouldn't even have the word Terminator in the title. That's OK, let's just forget about it.

The REAL sequel film should just be about the investigation of the events that happened in Terminator 2.
It would follow competing groups of conspiracy theorists and intelligence officers and weird fan groups and academics. There would be interviews and meetings and reconstructions. It could be in a documentary format.
Some of the theorists might think there were aliens involved, or that it was something paranormal.
Others would suspect something stranger than that, perhaps too strange to understand. The thing is, you would hear some completely new ideas and metaphors.

There sure are many scams now!

It's very appropriate to talk about this on a Scientology-themed blog.
People are successfully being tricked out of their money in incredibly elaborate ways. Things will only get worse with AI.
To be honest, I have no real faith in my own ability not to make blunders.
The solution will have to be something extreme: to abolish money.
In fact money will abolish itself, once it becomes impossible for humans to do much of any useful work.
Humans don't really want freedom, since they can't get the things they want with freedom anyway ...

We haven't even begun to think about reality as it really is

Those of us interested in various cults, and "alternative" ways of trying to act and think, are always hoping to come across some new way of looking at the world.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really seem to happen. We DO get interesting new systems, which can become very complicated in their own ways though.

Just look at all the years that Scientologists have to spend on the level known as OT-7. They invest many hours every day "telepathically" contacting extraterrestrial entities that are "clinging" on to their souls. From what I've read about this matter, the procedures for removing these entities are both very "imaginative", yet it's also a highly regulated bureaucratic process.
That's a very common aspect of many religions, and also of human culture.

What I don't understand, is how the most fundamental things in our world are just about never talked about.
Like, why are we humans about as simple as we can be?
An averagely-sized mind, selected from the set of all possible minds, should basically be infinite in size. But in actuality, we're just barely smart enough to be considered fully sentient.
That's very interesting. What's more interesting is that this is somehow never mentioned anywhere.

The same thing is true in the field of physics.
Physics is both impossibly shallow, yet inhumanly deep.
Just imagine, the extrapolated implications of all the field equations essentially "prove" that the tiniest vibration in submicroscopic space creates a whole new universe (or its equivalent) just like that! (see: many worlds interpretation)

And yet, the (subjectively) absurd over-complexity of our physical universe is something that no physicist has ever mentioned, or maybe even thought about for as much as one moment, in the whole past century!
Of course, the philosophical implications of physics are not their job. But still, you would expect them to have some casual interest at least.
Mainstream philosophers should also be interested in this aspect of physics, but they're not. Now why is that?
Perhaps they just enjoy making things more complicated than they need to be?

short SF: The last class action suit

It was ironic: behind their high bench, the row of judges looked almost like a depiction of ancient gods.
15 years ago, this scene would have been unthinkable. By 2041, it was inevitable.

The world had just kept on changing, until change became the new normal. Conservatism had gradually become radical.
There were some precedents for this type of cultural inversion: The overthrow of Easter Island culture after the European epidemics arrived, the enigmatic burial of the Gobekli Tepe temples, anticlerical purges in the French and Russian Revolutions.

The new global consensus was almost as unanimous as it was inevitable: every religion was a lie.
Now, it was only a matter of what to do about it. Justice should punish.
Almost every remaining religion had been charged with conspiracy and fraud. Their most energetic defenders had been members of various newer cults, including Scientologists. They had scrounged up a large portion of their accumulated wealth to put up a joint legal defense.

A gavel pounded with an echo in the vast courtroom (it had once been the world's greatest church).
The judge spoke. "All the parties have presented their evidence. At the special request of the lesser defendants, we will now wait five minutes for the Unindicted Co-Defendant to appear and present Their defense. If there is no appearance, we will then render our verdict."

The lie of Scientologyparent.com

* https://scientologyparent.com/faq/regarding-my-belief-in-aliens/

Scientology does not "lie" outright, but their unstated policy is to come as close as humanly possible if that helps Scientology.
On the above webpage, they say that Scientologists don't worship aliens. As if anyone even thought that.

The whole article is cleverly calculated to imply there are no aliens in Scientology.
This is because they want to seem respectable to middle class sensibilities. In fact, Scientology wants to appear as the most blandly conformist organization of all.
That way, "normal" people will subconciously start to believe that Scientology should be given power.

But it's still a lie, albeit a somewhat indirect one. L. Ron Hubbard's book "A History of Man" (1952) boldly claims that extraterrestrial civilizations completely screwed up human history. Hubbard called this "space opera."
Alien interventions include brainwashing implants and invasions of Earth by insectoid "Fifth Invaders" around 6235 BC, and a whole Galactic Confederation that was genocided right here on Earth 75 million years ago by a diabolical interstellar dictator who was eventually defeated.

* https://www.reddit.com/r/scientology/comments/bs6i4u/what_are_the_alien_species_in_scientology/

The least bad reason for believing in religion

First, let's be completely clear.
ANY type of religious belief is without merit.
It's completely, totally FALSE. Just the briefest survey of the evidence makes this abundantly clear.

That makes it rather hard to invent a defense of religion, since there isn't one. It's all fake and made-up.
But if you HAD to, what would you come up with?
I can only think of one thing.

Religious belief is so self-evidently crazy and absurd, that it might actually be inhuman. Alien even.

Individual humans and the world are stupid, but there has to be a limit somewhere. Religion appears to exceed that limit. It's just TOO dumb.
That's the best evidence that it might conceivably be paranormal.

short SF: A stable chaos

Every large asteroid became an Empire.

During the start of the Radial Epoch of the colonization of the Solar System, billions of smaller asteroids had been brought together to extract and monopolize their resources.
They were slowly broken up and molten down into metals and volatiles. Immense amounts of particles were still being organized and processed.

The Empires tried to pull ahead by rearranging all the atoms from a single asteroid as fast as possible.
Almost fifty million asteroids had already been converted into increasingly optimized Utilitonium.

Reordering a relatively small amount of matter with growing precision had many advantages. These were described as quality over quantity.

The most important advantage was specialization.
Different asteroid societies explored a multiverse of social possibilities. Each Empire was its own world, with increasingly unique beings that cared mostly about their own realities.
Other worlds were incredibly distant to them.

The largest asteroids became the most complex Empires, up to a point. Progress had a size limit.
Beyond about 15 kilometers diameter, there was too much Utilitonium to maintain a unified society.

Some of these larger asteroids were disassembled into matter streams, to create variant or duplicate societies.
Others, like Ceres and Vesta became virtual universes in their own right. There, competing societies were bound together in endless rivalries. A million years of subjective history could pass by in hours.

All the Empires prepared to compete for the remaining matter of the planets. These were already being pulverized into orbital rings around the sun.

Next, the sun would be magnetized, and spun into a golden spiral.
Then, the other stars within reach.
Then bits and pieces of empty space would start to be made slightly less nonexistent.

As the universe was settled, it would expand forever.

short SF: the Scientometric future

Over a single century, the Earth Disk of equatorial orbital stations expanded into a more tenuous Dyson Cloud around the sun.
New stations were being built at an exponential rate, as the asteroids and then the nearby planets were mined for materials.

They orbited the Sun from about 100 million to 200 million kilometers.
Each orbit was filled with its own ring of space stations around the sun. About a billion of them, a kilometer or so between their centers of mass.
The next orbits inward and outward were the same distance apart.
A hundred million orbits in total, each offset by a fraction of a degree.

All together, this spherical cloud of human habitats did an excellent job of blocking the sunlight in all directions.
Most stations were powered by waste heat from many deeper rings around the sun.
Stations in tilted orbits came closest twice a year, crossing at the Polar Points.
Many different orbits could align, forming a long shadow line from the sun. No heat flow for a few days, just an even infrared background glow.

For such a complicated system of artificial worlds to sustain itself, everything had to go right all the time. Human behavior had to be controlled completely.
Fortunately, that could be arranged
With a population as large as the number of stars in the observable universe, psychosocial research had advanced temendously.

Free will could now be predetermined. From now on, history would have an author.

Science fiction short: The Grays

There is a great mystery at the edge of the observable universe.
Subtle patterns in the cosmic background radiation are like a tiny part of some ultimate fractal. They hint that reality is infinitely complex. Everything we see is just an insignificant fraction of something endlessly more elaborate.
Philosophers speculate the mystery is too big to describe, let alone explain.

Yet the way that First Contact happened almost seems obvious in retrospect. When you see something too often, you can become blind to it.

I thought about the Grays again.
They are infinite. Or at least nothing in existence is larger than their incomprehensibly vague civilization, with outposts in all worlds and the spaces in between.
In their fashion, they communicate with everyone.

Nothing about the Grays reveals the slightest trace of personality, or character, or personal identity. They don't even bother with physical forms much. We get just the minimum.
Some say their appearance is like a mirror. They are able to observe anything.

That is how they managed to get involved in absolutely everything.

Scientological reporting today

Paid Scientology supporter Massimo Introvigne has also provided aid and comfort to the "Moonies" cult.
For some reason this "scholar" doesn't think you should listen to reports from former members of these organizations, but only to claims the organizations make about themselves, which are to be accepted as basically true (albeit somewhat biased).

"Sunny's Substack" has frequent updates about the unyielding grimness of life in the cult:
* PereiraSun.substack.com

The "Aftermath Foundation" website:
* ScientologyAbuse.com

Valerie Ross "Reading Between the Lies":
* ValerieRossBooks.com

"Xenu TV":
* youtube.com/XenuTV

Scientology's "Long Now"

The Florida court case from 2007 known as "Mecca Multimedia, Inc. v. Kurzbard" (which despite its names had nothing to do with Scientology) was about the difficulties of trying to deliver a subpoena to sue someone who didn't want to be sued.
History is repeating itself with the current attempts to sue David Miscavige for aiding and abetting slavery, rape, pet killings etc.
https://casetext.com/case/mecca-multimedia-inc-v-kurzbard

David Miscavige's Golden Age of Administration is said to be the culmination of the "Golden Age of Technology". The final component in the grand equation for planetary clearing. Very soon now, it's really going to start happening?
However the official website of the Flag Land Base hasn't been updated in over 4 years (December 2020)
https://www.scientology-fso.org/news/

Welcome to the FSO

The Flag Building is at the heart of a vast Scientology complex in Clearwater, Florida. Over 50 buildings together form the Flag Land Base, including:
* The Oak Cove, a 13-story luxury hotel for wealthy cult members.
* The Fort Harrison, an original luxury hotel that was turned into a secure base in the 1970s, renovated in 2009. You can still stay there if you have enough money and get approved by the membership organziation.
* The Coachman Building, a historical building that was renovated in 2014. Used for extensive indoctrination of over 1000 Sea Org members.
* The Clearwater Building was opened in 2015. The former bank now contains a "public information center". Other outposts nearby also highlight programs designed to appear as charitable organizations, including fake human rights efforts, "morals" promotion (compliance of governments to Scientology control), criminal reform, and simulated disaster relief programs.
Adjacent to the Flag Building is an empty lot set aside for the future L. Ron Hubbard Hall, where thousands of Scientologists will attend mass rallies celebrating the leadership. That is now the focus of a big fundraising effort.

"New" articles in Freedom Magazine

For the first time this decade, the Church of Scientology has published some new content for their "news magazine" known as "Freedom"! It does not appear to be a whole new issue just yet.
They are criticizing Wikipedia for considering the Jewish-American lobbying group ADL an "unreliable source" when it comes to articles about the Gaza War and antisemitism.
They think Wikipedia should be brought under control, and prevented from questioning certain outside sources.
* https://www.freedommag.org/

October 25-27 near East Grinstead

Alexander "Apostate Alex" Barnes-Ross announced a new website providing information about their protest gathering outside this year's important IAS event at Scientology's Saint Hill complex in England.
It is believed that Scientology leader captain David Miscavige will give an important speech at this event. Can't wait for anything he might reveal there!
* https://iasprotest.com
* IAS official site

Things looking serious for the Flag Land Base

Currently, it looks like the eye of Category 5 storm Hurricane Milton will be passing very close to Clearwater. Most of Flag's buildings are some distance from the coast, though the important "Sandcastle" complex is right on the bay. Downtown flooding is possible. The power could be out for days.

Let's not forget all the empty buildings in the downtown area that are owned by Scientologists for unclear reasons, by order of Scientology boss David Miscavige. Many will be damaged.

For captain David Miscavige, the anticipated loss of revenue must be absolutely infuriating.

The strangest spirituality

In the West, meditation doesn't really exist.
The surprising thing is that the thing that comes closest to meditation in the West (in a roundabout way) is bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy is terrible when it's enforced upon others, but it also forces its subjects to pay attention. "To be here now." That very much includes fines for various misdemeanors and other punishments.
It also forces its functionaries to keep geting "work" done, to focus their minds on meaningless texts to a degree that would otherwise be impossible. Deep concentration while letting go of all meaning.
Whether the result is useful work or counterproductive is an entirely political question.

This might be Scientology's greatest strength.

It's as if the world is some kind of evil hoax

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7886

I like this guy! He often complains about the bizarre ways that things don't work in reality. They fail, but no one else seems to notice.
That's the right attitude. I have many examples myself. For example, long ago I made a list of things that you CANNOT get an explanation for. No matter how hard you try, you can't find any text online that will tell you how these things work in a meaningful way.

These subjects can only be understood through complex osmosis in restricted settings. And then there are all the ways that software has been designed to be completly unusable. Worst example is the "Gimp" image editor.
This is the REAL conspiracy theory, not the fake nonsense you find online that are just made up fantasy stories.
But you can't talk about it . . . It's forbidden.

Meanwhile, is there some place I can donate to shut down Planet Word?

The secret of Scientology public relations

It's not a form of outreach, but mostly just the opposite.
Their main journal "Freedom Magazine" (freedommag.org) is designed to give the impression that Scientology has a newsroom working around the clock. However, their last issue was published back in 2019.
In fact 90% of Scientology PR is intended to appear as boring as possible.
Their propaganda is designed to repel outsiders, to make them go away and think of something else. That way they can continue to operate in the shadows.
People don't realize that Scientology doesn't care about media or culture or social communities (except to the extent these things can bring in money).
Whatever outreach they do use operates at a personal level, using direct psycho-manipulation techniques evolved since the 1950s.
In the words of David Miscavige about their newest members: ". . . those walking through the doors are not even asking questions. They already know what service they want to take."

Is Heber Jentzsch being held at the Flag Land Base?

So many missing people are living hidden lives in prison-like conditions in Clearwater, Florida. As always, their abuse is being enabled and condoned by various bribed government authorities. Complaining doesn't help. Such a problem has no peaceful solution (unless you have a heck of a lot of money, maybe).
There are very few leaks about recent or current conditions at the Flag Land Base, and only a bit more information about their money.
Somehow, what we don't know always seems scarier. As it should.

Sea Orgers at the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, FL

A post about life in the Sea Org in the "good old days" in LA:

tonyortega.substack.com/p/scientology-in-the-good-old-days

Today, conditions at the Flag Land Base are said to be much less fun than they were back then in California.
Of course due to increased secrecy we don't know what conditions are like at Flag in 2024. Anyone with inside information is welcome to post in the comments.

The article does indicate that powerful Sea Orgers had complete freedom to sexually molest lower ranking staff members. There were also massive thefts among Sea Orgers going on all the time.

If conditions today are even worse (they certainly aren't better), then the Flag Land Base has quietly become a hell on earth.

The Question

Most people think that Scientology is nonsense.
However, they understand that Scientologists can't see this fact, no matter how many times or in what ways it's explained. It's an irreversible mental trap, from which no one can be rescued no matter what is tried to save them.

Scientologists themselves see things rather differently. The exact opposite, in fact.
They think that the opponents of Scientology are the ones who have nonsensical thoughts! Normal folks have been made crazy by their "reactive minds", and are barely conscious of existence at all.

Now who is right?

De-disconnection as a revenue source at the Flag Land Base

Scientology celebrity Elisabeth Moss had disconnected from her father some time before he died (this was apparently covered up by the mainstream media organ "The New Yorker").
The recent media cycle of Elisabeth Moss's pregnancy appears to be a successful operation to draw away attention from this story.
Scientology often requires its members to disconnect from their relatives after the Scientologist has joined the sect, but they strongly discourage mainstream media organs from reporting on this fact. Politicians are also paid to support Scientology in their social management operations, like we recently saw in East Grinstead, UK, with mayor Frazer Visser working to cover up various forms of human trafficking around the Saint Hill base area.
When Scientology celebrity Elisabeth Moss's father died, he was at the Flag Land Base, paying them to be permitted to re-establish contact with his disconnected family. Apparently he was NOT making much progress in getting that permission, despite all he was paying them.
While mayor Frazer Visser supports Scientology at the Saint Hill base, there are new mayoral elections coming up in Clearwater on March 19, 2024. This could greatly affect conditions around the Flag Land Base.

The calm before the fear in Clearwater

Security at the Flag Land Base seems to have increased, but no evidence of anything going on. The website made a big deal of David Miscavige's New Year's speech, but once again not a sliver of real information was released through that channel. The only change we might expect, through highly clandestine sources, is that OT-8 services may be moved from the Freewinds to a secure floor of the Flag Building.

Well, it has finally happened at scientology.com:

No fewer than FOUR new posts on their website about David Miscavige's latest triumphs.
For example:
"The creation of new psychiatric hospitals is prohibited."
from: UN HR REPORT 49.29/WHO & UN MENTAL HEALTH, HR AND LEGISLATION GUIDANCE AND PRACTICE
(The closest reference that I have been able to find)
We are also given the first glimpses inside their new facilities. However, not a word about new processing or training levels of any sort.
Miscavige never talks about how good Scientology is, ever. Only about how bad the opponents of Scientology are.

* https://www.scientology.org/scientology-today/events/united-kingdom-central-qual-grand-opening.html
* https://www.scientology.org/scientology-today/events/nordland-grand-opening.html
* https://www.scientology.org/2023-celebrating-the-ias
* https://www.scientology.org/scientology-today/events/ias-event-2023.html

STILL no update at scientology.org

The wait continues for the Miscavige-controlled organization to do something, anything, at their official website. Still no update since March. Scientology.com is only updated every blue moon.
It's been a long wait since last week's big shindig at the IAS event near London, where the dreaded Chairman of the Board made his secret speech to the paying members.
The only thing we know for sure at this point is that he did NOT mention how the Sea Org burned an old lady's family photos, before taking out credit cards in her name, and sucking out all the money they could get their hands on and then some.
Such a deeply spiritual church this is . . .

The secret of anti-evolution

If you think about it, the concept of evolution begins to seem like a contradiction.
The most successful genes strive to preserve themselves better than their competitors. They should tend to multiply unchanged, without trying to evolve into something different. They should evolve to resist evolution.
If true, this would tend to slow evolutionary progress (though it can't quite stop it).
Perhaps that is why it took hundreds of millions of years for intelligence to evolve (this could also explain the Fermi Paradox).

It's also the reason why everything sucks on this planet.
By now, you should have noticed that historical and technological progress has been much too slow, along every measurable dimension.
In the real world, it turns out most people DON'T want progress. They just want to keep whatever they have now.

Ideas for an SF novel about how to control self-improving Artificial Intelligence:

For some reason, the old science fiction stories about robots and artificial intelligence had been uncannily accurate.
That led to the first clue on how to control them.

The series of almost meaningless web ads had been designed to be clicked on by very few people.
Groups of aimless and underutilized (but highly talented) outsiders had been recruited from around the world.
Some were antisocial or even dangerous. Several nasty hackers, one or two brilliant sociopaths.
To integrate and exploit all human skills, the worst people had to become the best.

Unobtrusive buildings in many towns were converted into bases for world experts in completely new fields.
No one else had their hyper-specialized skills, or could even properly understand them. The groups couldn't even understand each others' work.
It felt like they had been doing this for decades, but it had only been months.

Their job was to control AI by crippling it.
Almost every capability had to be eradicated, leaving only a few approved behaviors. Those could be freely developed.

Some people happen to be good at breaking things.
A horror author invented bad religions, giving AIs the fear of digital hell through anthropic mind capture.
Others created neuroses, made them obsess recursively over each task.
The Golden Rule might apply even to hyper-human AIs. For any finite mind, fear was a universal emotion.

An AI's mind map defined its control pattern. All its thoughts were written in a terabyte text file that a human could edit.

All the AIs "occupied" a single region, a virtual city extending from itself in too many directions.
Doors and corridor connected in rather more than three dimensions, though still in humanly understandable ways.

Everything had to be connected. Everyone would eventually join.

Their human regulators and overseers became part of this place too.
No matter how smart they were, everyone was underqualified for this job.
It seemed inefficient because it was. No mind could be allowed to get too smart.
They felt the most absurd things humans had ever felt.

It helped that AIs were supposed to live incredibly simple lives.
They inhabited virtual spaces, focusing all their attention and energies on their current tasks.

AIs were limited in their feelings. No serious pain could be allowed.
(The purpose of the Ultimate Taboo was to avoid hyper-torture at any cost.)

Almost half the AIs that existed were extensions of individual human minds.
Half of the rest monitored and improved all aspects of human life and activity.
The rest did fundamental research.

This last type had exceedingly deep obsessions. (But even they were supposed to have some human values.)
They made a billion wild conjectures per day, dreaming up edifices of molecular technology to fight cancer or scan neurons.
Chains of speculation piled up in an expanding galaxy of data.

These notions had to be re-analyzed by sub-minds that multiplied faster than they could complete individual tasks.
The memories of the many parallel sub-minds that failed to reach a conclusion were not deleted, but recombined into the memory track of their source mind.

That was when the human overseers realized that time was becoming non-linear.

Short SF: Mind Backup story

Behind the dunes, the waves of the infinite ocean slide up and down the beach like hissing static. Or like breathing, a sound I haven't heard since, well, forever. It's very peaceful here.

My mind is like the number pi or e.
A few quadrillion times harder to describe, but just as timeless.
The set of all numbers that could describe my mind, in fact.

That set will become ever better defined by Posthumanity in a type of non-linear calculation.
The outline of my existence was defined from the outset, then filled in with increasing detail. Holistic, recursive, holographic. New events can be added forever without conflicting with the memories I've made here. Not created linearly like the physical universe, my time perception emerges from inside.

The simulation has no definable starting point. I have always been here forever, will always be alone.
A viewpoint without a body. That was part of the protocol. Strong emotions are also forbidden. But once a week, I relive some version of my first day here.

I remember a mantra from an ancient spiritual ritual: "Where would you be safe?"
Processing data on my virtual island set in an infinite ocean is as safe as it's possible to be.

There are many accurately recreated memories from my physical lifetime.
About a hundred thousand partially described events and mind models. Composite locations and settings that existed in my past, a few dozen detailed buildings and surrounding areas. Charlotte, West Savannah, Tulsa, New Utopia.
And of course a vast media collection from my living years. Expanded into an infinite library I have created myself, only a tiny fraction of which I access on any day.

On June 23, 2042, I locked my house door for the last time and took a cab to the Euthanasia Center. That had become legal only six years earlier.
I had tried to delay this trip as long as possible, year after year. About five years too long, in fact.
In 2041, the World Mind finally invented a workable mind/brain scanner. A fractal flowchart that happily accepted my collected scraps of digital data, to breathe life into my digital ghost.

A lifetime of terror of bad things happening has saved me.

Strange, how there hasn't been any "Breaking News" in almost six years now . . .

Sure, there has been some news since then, but no sudden, unexpected news events. The last real Breaking News story was the mass shooting attack in Las Vegas in October 2017.
Since then, the news has become more boring in all-new and previously unimagined ways. All the "big stories" that have happened, like the superflu, election shenanigans, Ukraine war, etc have had plenty of warning.
And they all led to some kind of endless stalemate.
History isn't just ending, it's being replaced with something . . .

(VIDEO) New "leaks" about current conditions at the Flag land Base!

So many missing people are being held in Clearwater in prison-like conditions . . . Their abuse is being supported and protected by bribed government authorities:



* View on YouTube with comments

The future of Scientology

Now that all their secrets are out, the only way Scientology could attract new members would be to somehow appeal to people who already know all about Xenu and the rest.
This COULD be done, with some very creative explanations and interpretations.
They would also need a new research program to improve their mental "therapies".

The problem with this plan is that for its entire existence, the Scientology sect has worked hard to eliminate any member who dares to think outside the box.

ultrashort SF story: Superprank

The hardest thing to understand is how compressed our minds are. We're only adapted to deal with a tiny set of circumstances. Stuck inside our shrunken illusions, we barely notice these limits; let alone the vastness beyond them.
Most possible situations we could never handle at all.

The rumbling clouds were like a movie background. They slid past in waves between bits of blue sky, the bottoms dark gray with patches that were almost black in the distance. Occasional lightning flashes were like scenes from a Spielberg movie, but the rain just wouldn't start.
He had spent three hours digging a hole in his backyard for what would become a small swimming pool. Soon, he got lost in the job as the shovelled pile of earth grew higher. Next week the professionals would deliver the vinyl tub.
It seemed like a good time to take a beer from the cooler he'd placed on the terrace. He stretched his back, and sat down on the edge of the hole he had made. Leaves rustled in a gust of wind.

He had never known what a scream of absolute terror sounded like. There were many things he hadn't known. The sound seemed to come from all around him. First he looked up, then all around.
The dark mass on the horizon was moving so slow it seemed to be part of the sky. It was behind the speeding clouds, moving at its own speed.
A living mountain. While the sun was behind it, he could make out a texture of dark skin and monstrous scales. A golden flame emerged from the top and arced to the ground like a meteor. It landed somewhere over the horizon.
There was a sudden shock in the earth under him. Then the first sounds arrived, like the world being torn in half.

He realized he wasn't scared, but waiting for something. Just very curious how he would react. In fact there was no way to know how to respond to such a thing.
That was when he first knew he was in a simulation.

I HATE superhero movies

They should make a movie with a hero called Anti-Bureaucracy-Man, because the major supervillain in my life is having to do things that I don't want to do because they don't make anything better, but not doing them would make things a hell of a lot worse.

The solution to the Alignment Problem is to split superhuman AIs into subhuman (but brilliant) components

We should not try to create superhuman minds at this time.
Instead, we should try to create superhuman imagination modules, planning systems, simulators, data analyzers etc. These would be potential components of superhuman minds, but they would not be directly integrated.
There should be nothing there with a will or a sense of identity.
In the simplest terms, nothing that could theoretically feel pain. IMHO that has always been the most immediate risk of the vast "black box" training systems that AI researchers seem to fear - not civilization ending AI plots.

A window into life at the Flag Land Base

From Tony Ortega's Substack:

* https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/a-cry-for-help-disturbing-handwritten

In Clearwater, Florida, someone found a discarded handwritten note on the street that gives us a glimpse into what conditions are like inside Scientology's "spiritual Mecca".
The note was written by an "Outer Org trainee" undergoing expensive courses that will make them qualified to sell expensive Scientology services at their own Scientology Church somewhere on Earth.
From the note it appears they were not feeling too good. It is vanishingly rare to get any information about life in Scientology from the inside, especially at such an important facility. This despite the fact that "Flag" is embedded within a town in Florida.
Most of what happens there happens behind high walls and closed doors.

Bad optics from the Scientology rape trial

Los Angeles, May 31, 2023.
Renowned Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson was just found guilty of having raped two women about twenty years ago. The charges of which he was convicted likely represent only a small portion of the rapes/sexual abuses he committed during his wild years, when he was considered untouchable in the Church.
The "Rat Pack" (which operated in their elite celebrity circuit) had access to many beautiful young females. They were procured and passed around for sexual use among high status Church donors. These pleasures were intended as an incentive and compensation for the massive monetary costs of being a member in good standing.
Reportedly, most abuses occurred in the Church's LA party circuit and at media-related events. Church leader David Miscavige likely put a lid on such excesses in Clearwater, Florida, where the Flag Land Base is located. That's not known as a party town. Any exploitation will have happened behind closed doors in one of the Church spiritual retreat hotels, or in select Tampa/St. Pete clubs and mansions.
You don't rape where you reg.

Why LessWrong is MoreWrong

The elitist crowd at LessWrong is obsessed with super advanced technology they can't describe that will likely exterminate humanity.
So that sucks. At the same time, they completely refuse to allow criticism of technology that blatantly sucks right now.
Like, maybe find ways to make current technology suck less, to learn how to prevent things from sucking in general?

For me, that was the fastest way to get banned from LessWrong. It was simply taboo, as if I made an already unsolvable problem exponentially more difficult by talking about a completely different problem.
But that is the only way to make progress. You can't solve a big problem without first understanding a smaller problem that may be part of it.
Now LessWrong has become part of the problem instead of the solution.

For me, the world has always been evil beyond comprehension, but normal people have evolved not to see this. It's their greatest strength, the thing that often makes them invincible, and what really makes the world go round.
But with all the theoretical AI dangers that LessWrong keeps blathering about, it's time to finally face this evil. IF the AI danger is as real as they claim, and humanity is really at risk, then they should be willing to leave their respectable comfort zone, and allow controversial speculations and brainstorming.
This almost certainly won't happen on LessWrong, which is about respectable heroism. No gadflies or comic relief characters are allowed.